“ the INNER Frontier” BORDERS, NARRATIVES, AND Cultural INTIMACY in TOPOLÒ/topolove DONATELLA COZZI On 21 December 2007 one of the most contentious borders 21. decembra 2007 je bila naposled odprta ena spornejših in Europe, the one between Slovenia and northeastern mej v Evropi, tista med Slovenijo in severovzhodno Italijo. Italy, finally opened. This article presents narratives from Članek predstavlja pripovedi treh rodov iz vasi Topolò/ the village of Topolò, near the Italian–Slovenian border, Topolove ob italijansko-slovenski meji. Ti so z mejo živeli by three generations that lived with the border in different na različne načine: nekateri so razvili strategije, da so jo ways. Some people developed strategies to bypass it, whereas obšli, drugi so si ustvarili nasprotno etničnost in “notranjo others built up a contrasting ethnicity and an “inner fron- mejo”, ki čustveno oblikuje njihova življenja. tier” that emotionally shapes their lives. ključne besede: mehanizmi ustvarjanja mejnosti, slovenska keywords: mechanisms of boundary construction, Sloveni- manjšina v Italiji, razločevalna etničnost, slovensko-itali- an minority in Italy, contrasting ethnicity, Slovenian-Itali- janska meja, pripovedovanje o mejnosti, italijanizacija. an border, narrating borderlands, Italianization. DIVIDED MEMORIES Climbing up the narrow streets of topolò (sln. topolove, topolovo, or tapulouve),1 the place where i carried out my research, you end up encountering a very unusual thing. this is a sculpture, set up in 1995, made from parts of old farm tools and representing an ani- mal that howls towards the border. it stands near the houses, just before the hills covered with vineyards, like a watchdog. it seems to howl like a furious beast, or like a wounded animal, against the border that on 14 september 1947 separated this village from its fields and from its agricultural and exchange outlets, which remained beyond the frontier, in Yugoslavia. in addition, it separated the inhabitants of topolò/topolove from their rela- tives and friends, and from their economic and social exchanges with livek (ital. luico) and the upper isonzo/soča valley, including the town of kobarid (ital. Caporetto). on 21 december 2007, the republic of slovenia joined the schengen area, so that the border between northeastern italy and slovenia, one of the cruelest and most disruptive borders in europe, was finally opened. on this border, and around its creation, events occurred that prolonged the horror of the second World War far beyond its end. 1 t opolò/topolove – val natisone/nadiža river valley – udine, italy. DOI: 10.3986/traditio2009380210 traditiones, 38/2, 2009, 151–164 Traditiones 38•2_FIN.indd 151 4.5.2010 9:33:01 e urope: imagination & praCtiCes sculpture, set up in 1995, made from parts of old farm tools and representing an animal that howls towards the border (photo: d. Cozzi). t his essay emphasizes the impact that state definition and regulation at borders can have on people’s identities there, and explores the extent to which people’s own subjectivi- ties reflect, contradict, or challenge these state classifications. the slovenian minority in these valleys appear to have been “written off” by italian state history. Fascism’s strategy of italianizing the valleys of the natisone river started in 1931, with a prohibition against using the people’s native slovenian in schools and in church ceremo- nies. language, as the most visible and active sign of a contemptible minority, featured in mussolini’s plans for aggression against the kingdom of Yugoslavia. local slovenian priests and the population, especially the elderly, who spoke only the local slovenian dialect, struggled against this prohibition sustained by the provincial Fascist leaders and by ecclesiastical authorities (nazzi 1995). in brief, slovenian language and culture had to be erased, starting with the symbolic space of rituals defining the lifecycle and the course of the year, and the imposition of a single language in schools, a language unknown to children and their families. italianization also meant that better-paid jobs were available only to “italian” people. in trieste, in gorizia, and in the julian march, the imposition of Fascism and italianization were more violent, but these valleys also knew the legacies of violence generated by the dual traumas of Fascism and communism in the twentieth century. 152 Traditiones 38•2_FIN.indd 152 4.5.2010 9:33:01 d onatella Cozzi, “the inner Frontier”: borders, narratives, and Cultural intimaCY … p rior to the second World War, the natisone valleys were not divided by a border. this is where competing views of identity were introduced, envisioning the region as a “pure” italian land, not characterized by ethnic and linguistic diversity. in topolò/topolove the border marked since 1947 has replaced a historical memory with another one: previously, you could walk for days from topolò without encountering a border. above all, the border has created differences where there were none before, and it has shaped mutual stereotypes and sometimes even serious racist attitudes toward the slovenian minority living here. it was in these valleys that Gladio operated – a secret armed organization meant to defend local italian identity against the ethnic and political Yugoslav “threat.” this was a paramilitary group born in 1946 and named Organizzazione O, later recreated as Gladio in 1956. the apex of its activity occurred in 1948, during the first democratic elections in the newly born italian republic. this happened because of the fear of a possible political victory by the leftist parties, and in order to control the eastern border in a “hidden but alert” (occulta ma vigile) manner. in 1948 there were approximately a thousand armed men in the natisone valleys. this group concealed secret stashes of weapons, and when the group membership lists were made public in november 1990 a serious outcry was raised (petricig 1997). the new border was an overdetermined configuration of meanings, privileging italian identity, coming to dominate and subordinate alternative understanding of places. a fear of being overwhelmed (linke 1999)2 and an anxiety of inundation from the margins point to parallel processes by which notions of frontiers were created in the natisone valleys – “the idea of the frontier, the border, the geographic place where opposing nations met and confronted each other, the setting for the colossal and daily struggle between nations” (judson 1996: 394–395). today an informal group continues to proclaim that the valleys of venetian slovenia (ital. Slavia Veneta or Slavia Italiana, sln. Benečija) have always been italian, and that slavic people are living there only accidentally. this testifies that the groups have complex relationships with the centers of power, particularly in historical production. in addition, differences such as political affiliation, class, and gender divide these communi- ties at times. as donnan and Wilson (1999: 4) note, “anthropologists in general have had much more to say about the cultural and symbolic boundaries between groups, than about the concrete, physical borders between them.” the case of topolò brings into sharp focus the ways in which some current theoretical formulations of both borderlands and hybridity draw heavily not only on linguistic models (see bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia, or the syncretism informing creolization), but also on organic or racial models. topolò is not a creolized world. it did not experience a diaspora, as did the julian march, but just emigration (especially for mining jobs in France and belgium in the 1950s) as an 2 t he trieste lawyer and writer giorgio bevilacqua offers an extreme example of the desire to protect the boundaries of italian national identity from the polluting threat of the slovenian “race.” he writes that “the slavic people constitute an immense tide [marea] that, permeated by a constant ferment, is marching toward the west” (1991: 11). 153 Traditiones 38•2_FIN.indd 153 4.5.2010 9:33:01 e urope: imagination & praCtiCes aftermath of economic marginality. its ethnic identity (i dislike this expression because it often hides a complex dynamic of powers) has been under attack since Fascist times, but the residents are in fact italian citizens. there remain many important stories to be told about the Cold War and how dif- ferent groups lived it. What follows represents the first part of a study on how the eastern border has been perceived by three generations, from 1947 to 2007. i deliberately chose this small community because i wanted to be able to understand some of the transformations linked to the italian-slovenian border in a place that remained separate from the bloody political vicissitudes after the second World War, but where the border had nevertheless affected daily life. i collected a total of twelve in-depth interviews: four interviews with people over sixty, four interviews with people between thirty and sixty, and four among persons younger than thirty. the personal histories of the elderly people and their relatives intersect with the major currents of twentieth-century european experience: nationalism and state building, the second World War, the confrontation between Fascism and communism, the Cold War, and its end. i am carrying out the second part of the study by collecting interviews on the slovenian side of the border, in the soča valley. Finally, topolò/topolove, was not a random choice: for more than ten years, every july a contemporary art workshop has been held in this village. artists from various european countries stay there for a few weeks and create installations that then remain in the village, many of which are inspired by the border. this fact facili- tated topolò’s access to eu funding, thanks to which many abandoned houses have been repaired and restructured, some of them transformed into vacation accommodations. this has helped topolò avoid becoming a ghost-town through depopulation, as has happened to so many other villages in the area, as the film Ricuciture di memorie / Sešivalnica spomina (binding memories) by anja medved and nadja velušček (2006) documents along the entire italian-slovenian border area.